Medieval Wellness Tips • Hacker News Board

Re: Medieval Wellness Tips

#41

Post by Tor3 » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 2:16 PM UTC

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #7

chrisjack wrote: post #3

>For a man who’s been painfully beaten >Take cudweed and boil it in fine ale, and drink it first thing in the morning and last thing at night; and make the patient a bed in a pile of steaming horse dung, and lay him in it. Sleeping in a pile of horse sh*t... I don't see any hygenic problem with that, let alone the smell...

London, and other towns and cities, had a bit of a shit problem in the 1300s. Streets full of horse and human shit, households throwing their waste into the streets and/or river or if lucky selling it to a nearby cloth dyer, water dangerous to drink so best stick to beer or wine, the serious health risk from floors covered in rushes. OK, if you were posh enough there was a chute from the privvy straight into the moat…

Compared to all the rest, horse manure would be almost nice. It's not that far from just grass, anyway.

Re: Medieval Wellness Tips

#42

Post by castlecrasher2 » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 2:16 PM UTC

markatkinson wrote: post #15

Not dissimilar to a couple modern wellness tips I have come across...

Sometimes I'll be reading a blog with what I think is decent health advice then suddenly that stupid feet-to-body-parts diagram appears and I have to actively forget what I just read.

Re: Medieval Wellness Tips

#43

Post by castlecrasher2 » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 2:21 PM UTC

blauditore wrote: post #12

> If you doubt this’ll work, test it on a dog which is completely red. This really confuses me. Why does the dog need to be red? Also, if someone ever tested it, it should be obvious to not work...

I read somewhere here on HN that medieval colors weren't precisely accurate. I wonder if red also meant brown or reddish-brown and dogs like the Rhodesian Ridgeback would qualify.

Re: Medieval Wellness Tips

#44

Post by sandworm101 » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

DanAndersen wrote: post #21

We should keep in mind that these tips are specifically chosen because of their unusual and laughable nature, and so should refrain from attempting to generalize about the nature of medieval medicine from a biased dataset.

They also omit any reference to religion or what we would call the supernatural, both common in medical texts of the time.

Re: Medieval Wellness Tips

#45

Post by sandworm101 » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 2:32 PM UTC

m23khan wrote: post #13

This is awesome - the invisible trick really works! Try it for yourself - you will see people staring at you but you will know you are invisible!

I suspect that some context has been lost. 'Invisible' probably doesn't mean literally transparent. It may mean invisible to God, a free pass for sin. That would dovetail with the other powers of this device.

Re: Medieval Wellness Tips

#46

Post by LyndsySimon » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 2:33 PM UTC

gnulinux wrote: post #14

blauditore wrote: post #12

> If you doubt this’ll work, test it on a dog which is completely red. This really confuses me. Why does the dog need to be red? Also, if someone ever tested it, it should be obvious to not work...

Maybe an old phrase meaning "rabid dog" or "raged dog". Rabies was probably orders of magnitude more common of an occurrence back then (which is non-existent in most Western countries right now).

Rabies isn't that uncommon in the US - uncommon in domestic animals, sure, but I shot a likely rabid skunk a couple of weeks ago. It was out during the day, was walking at an angle, and was aggressive toward me.

Re: Medieval Wellness Tips

#47

Post by jpindar » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 2:51 PM UTC

Tor3 wrote: post #41

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

London, and other towns and cities, had a bit of a shit problem in the 1300s. Streets full of horse and human shit, households throwing their waste into the streets and/or river or if lucky selling it to a nearby cloth dyer, water dangerous to drink so best stick to beer or wine, the serious health risk from floors covered in rushes. OK, if you were posh enough there was a chute from the privvy straight into the moat…

Compared to all the rest, horse manure would be almost nice. It's not that far from just grass, anyway.

Unlike that of most other animals, I don't think horse manure is an intrinsically unpleasant smell. It doesn't bother me.

Re: Medieval Wellness Tips

#48

Post by harimau777 » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 3:08 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #38

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think like a process control engineer. Roll the parchment around an arrow or bolt and shoot the dog with it and you've just removed a step. At "across the street" range it shouldn't affect accuracy very much

I like that idea. Should also eventual test to see if parchment attachment time matter, penmanship on the words, etc. Gonna need a lot of parchment, rabid dogs... swords, etc.

I know at least in Shakespeare's day (and I would presume also in middle ages) gold was considered to be a shade of red, so Golden Retrievers would also have to watch their back.

Re: Medieval Wellness Tips

#49

Post by SmellyGeekBoy » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 3:30 PM UTC

hennsen wrote: post #17

coldtea wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> steal church parchments, extract the liver of a dog How are these "hard to achieve"?

Big and heavy - requires anatomic knowledge (you know there was no Wikipedia showing exactly where that dog carries it’s liver)...

Probably in the same place as a sheep or a pig. A butcher would have no problem finding it. ;)

Re: Medieval Wellness Tips

#50

Post by SmellyGeekBoy » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 3:30 PM UTC

pcmaffey wrote: post #26

edmanet wrote: post #4

Seems to be a lot of horse dung involved.

Humans are one of the only animals that don’t eat poop. The benefits of poo exposure is an increased diversity of gut bacteria and biome, which we are just starting to understand the benefits of. This is one big benefit of having a dog.

> This is one big benefit of having a dog.

You get to eat its poop?